by Colm Toibin
“I did,” Thomas said.
Armin busied himself with the second poem; he did not look up.
“Did you write this one as well?” he asked.
Thomas nodded.
“Does anyone else know?”
“No. I wrote them only for you to see.”
Armin did not respond.
“I wrote them to you,” Thomas said, almost whispering. He thought to reach out and touch Armin on the arm or the shoulder, but he held back.
Armin’s face reddened. He looked at the ground. Thomas worried for a moment that Armin might believe that his intentions were compromising, that he might soon suggest, for example, they slip into an empty warehouse together. He needed to let him know there was nothing further from his mind. What he sought from Armin should come not in some quick consummation, but in soft words, or a look, or a gesture. He wished for nothing more.
He found, as he kept his eyes on Armin, that he was close to tears. Armin checked the other side of both sheets of paper to see if there was anything more written on them. He perused the two poems again.
“I don’t think I am like music or like poetry,” he said. “I am like myself. And some people say that I am like my father. And as regards living forever with a poet, I don’t know. I think I will live in my father’s house until the time comes for me to buy my own residence. Let’s go down and look at the ships.”
As he handed the poems to Thomas, he punched him gently and mockingly in the chest.
“Make sure no one finds those poems. My friends have already made up their minds about you, but it would ruin my reputation.”
“The poems mean nothing to you?”
“I prefer ships to poems, and girls to ships, and so should you.”
Armin strode ahead. When he looked behind and saw that Thomas still had the sheets of paper in his hand, he laughed.
“Put that stuff away or someone will find it and throw us in the water.”
* * *
In his last year at the Katharineum, Armin Martens changed as Thomas himself did. He lost all his friendliness and boyishness. He became serious. Soon he would begin working at his father’s mill. He would have his own office. He already carried with him a sense of his future importance. Unaware of the dullness of his destiny, he would, Thomas saw, integrate himself naturally into the business life of Lübeck.
On the top floor of Dr. Timpe’s house, his son Willri, a year older than Thomas, had the front room. Although they knew each other from school, Willri made clear to Thomas as soon as he moved into his new quarters that he had no interest in becoming his friend. It surprised Thomas that Dr. Timpe was almost proud of Willri’s lack of interest in books and learning.
“He likes the open air and machines,” the professor said, “and maybe the world would be a better place if we all shared his preferences. Maybe books have had their day.”
No one protested when Willri stood up from the table before the meal had ended and left the room. He had grown taller than his own father and heavier too. This appeared to amuse Dr. Timpe.
“Soon he will be ordering me around. So what is the point of me giving him orders? He has his own mind made up about everything. He is a complete adult.”
He looked at Thomas, suggesting that perhaps Thomas, who took time over his meals, could learn something from his son.
At night, since the wall was thin, he was aware of Willri in the next room. He imagined him preparing for bed and lying warm beneath the blankets. He smiled at the thought that he would not write poems about Willri; no one ever would. But perhaps he had written enough poems for the moment. Nonetheless, the thought of Willri in the next room stayed with him and often excited him.
One night, Willri knocked on his door and asked him to come into his room to help him with a Latin translation. As Thomas studied the text, sitting on the edge of the bed, he was surprised that Willri had begun to undress. Embarrassed, he was about to propose that they look at the Latin in the morning when he saw that Willri, with his back to him, would soon be naked. It took him a while to realize that Willri had no interest at all in the Latin. He had invited him into his room for other reasons.
Soon an encounter in that front bedroom became part of their ritual. Tiptoeing on the creaky floorboards, Thomas would open the door of Willri’s room without knocking. The lamp would still be burning. Willri would be lying fully clothed on the single bed.
One evening, having made his way home from a visit to his aunt Elisabeth, Thomas, as usual, ascended the stairs without making a sound, taking the steps lightly one by one. On the upper landing, he saw that Willri’s lamp was still on. In his own room, he removed his overcoat and sat down on the edge of the bed. Sometimes, it was more exciting if he waited for Willri to come and look for him.
He listened. In the silence that reigned, he knew that the smallest sound up here would be heard on the floors below where the rest of the Timpe family was sleeping.
Willri tried to appear casual when he came into Thomas’s room and stepped towards the window and opened a chink in the curtains. He made it seem as if looking out into the emptiness of the night was his sole reason for being here. And when he turned, the expression on his face displayed a slow ease and contentment. He reached towards Thomas and for a second touched his face. Then he smiled and stood looking at Thomas, who gazed at him in return.
When Willri indicated, Thomas, having taken off his shoes, followed his companion to his room at the front. Willri closed the door behind them and pointed to the bed, putting a finger to his lips. Thomas went across the room, lying down on the bed, his hands behind his head. With his back to him, Willri started to undress.
This was the ritual they conducted on nights when the others were sleeping. Willri began by removing his jacket, hanging it on the back of the single chair in the room. He acted like someone who was alone. He unfastened his trousers and took them off, placing them on the chair. From the bed, Thomas examined his strong, hairless legs. He knew that once Willri had shed his underwear, he would then bend to take off his socks. This would be the moment he would try to remember later when he returned to his room. He propped himself up on his elbows so that he could see more clearly. Once Willri had tucked the socks into his shoes, he stood up straight again and opened the buttons on his shirt.
Soon he was completely naked. He lifted his arms and put his hands behind his head, mirroring Thomas’s pose on the bed. For some time, he did not change his position or make a sound. Thomas studied his body carefully, but knew that he should not move from the bed or attempt to embrace Willri.
One night, when Willri had faced him, displaying an erection, Thomas loosened his own clothes and approached him. For the first time, he touched Willri, who encouraged him to come closer. Thomas was just as shocked as Willri when he found that, without warning, he had climaxed and begun to utter short and urgent cries. Instantly, Willri whispered to him that he must leave now, go to his room and put out the lamp. And get into bed without any delay.
Stealing into the corridor, Thomas could hear a door opening downstairs and Willri’s father shouting: “Are the two of you not in bed? What is going on up there?” Then he heard footsteps on the stairs.
Thomas knew that if Dr. Timpe entered his room and touched the lamp he would know from the heat that it had just been extinguished. And if he pulled back the blankets, he would see that Thomas was fully clothed. And if he stood close enough, he would be able to guess from the smell what Thomas and his son had been doing.
Thomas heard him opening Willri’s door and asking his son what the noise was about. He did not hear Willri’s reply. Soon, he knew, Dr. Timpe would come to check his room. He turned his face towards the wall and remained still, attempting to mimic the breathing of someone who was fast asleep.
When he heard Dr. Timpe opening his door, he made his breath even and soft, presuming that he would be carefully watched for any sign that he was really awake. Dr. Timpe must know that it was Thomas’s voice th
at had woken him, that it was Thomas who had been making the sounds that were out of control.
Even when he heard the door closing, he did not move, afraid that Dr. Timpe had shut it only as a way of enticing him to do so. He could be still in the room.
He waited for some time, listening for the smallest sound, before getting out of bed and, slowly in the dark, removing his clothes and putting on his night attire.
In the morning, he wondered what Willri’s father would have to say about the cries he had heard the night before. At breakfast, however, Dr. Timpe appeared distracted and silent, preoccupied by something in the newspaper. He barely looked up as Thomas joined the family at the table.
* * *
In school, now that his father was dead and the firm no longer existed, now that he lodged in a sort of boardinghouse, no one seemed to notice him.
The power and prestige that he had taken as a natural inheritance had all gone. Until his father’s death, he had been a sort of prince, enjoying the solid comfort of the family house and basking in his mother’s colorful presence.
Before his father’s death, Thomas’s indolence at school and his inattentiveness were subjects of hushed discussion between teachers, becoming scandalous at the end of term when reports were sent out. Some teachers did everything they could to detach him from his idleness; others singled him out for special scolding. All of them added copiously to the strain of each day.
Now the strain was different. It came from being a lost cause, someone not worth bothering with. Teachers had ceased to care if he understood a formula or was reduced to looking furtively at his neighbor’s copybook. No one asked him to recite a poem by heart, even though privately he had begun to take pleasure from the work of Eichendorff and Goethe and Herder.
What happened between him and Willri Timpe was not part of any soulful connection. In the future, he knew, what they did in that upper room would matter little to Willri. Their intermittent intimacy was not only furtive and unmentionable but shrouded with an attitude of indifference that they showed to each other during the daylight hours. After meals in the house, or on Sundays when they had free time, Willri and he still did not seek each other out.
It was almost impossible not to sneer openly at his teachers, even those whom he had previously tolerated. To Herr Immerthal, the mathematics teacher, he took pride in being insolent and mocking. The class reveled in his smart remarks and enjoyed watching the teacher being humiliated. When Herr Immerthal complained about Thomas to the principal, the principal wrote to his mother, who, in turn, wrote to Thomas saying that if his father were alive, he would take a very dim view of his refusal to conform and apply himself to his studies. Since his father had named two guardians—Herr Krafft Tesdorpf and Consul Hermann Wilhelm Fehling—to monitor his development, she would be forced to contact them were she to receive any more complaints.
Thomas discovered that there were students in the class who were starting to take an interest in poetry. Most of them had been so quiet and timid in earlier years that he had barely noticed them. None of them came from the significant families in Lübeck.
Now, as they approached the end of their schooling, these boys were filled with enthusiasm for essays and stories and poems. The fact that they loved Schubert and Brahms more than Wagner did not disappoint him; it meant that he could keep Wagner for himself. All of them wanted to contribute to a literary magazine they might publish, see their poems in print. Without any effort, Thomas, as editor, became almost a mentor to them. Even though they were mostly his age, they looked up to him. His knowledge of the work of the German poets mattered more to them than his dire performance in the classroom. And despite the fact that he found a few of them handsome, he knew not to write poems dedicated to them.
* * *
While many of his schoolmates had no ambition to move beyond Lübeck, it was obvious to Thomas that, once he himself finished school, he would leave. With the firm sold, there was no place for him there. He often walked around the city and down to the docks, or he stopped by Café Niederegger and bought some marzipan with its Brazilian sugar, knowing that he would inevitably relinquish these streets and cafés, they would live only in his memory. When he felt the harsh wind from the Baltic, he knew that this would soon be something that belonged to the past.
Although his mother and his sisters wrote to him, he felt that what they omitted from their letters was more significant than what they included. Their tone was too formal. This gave Thomas permission to reply to each of them in the same tone, telling them nothing important, especially nothing about how badly he was doing in school. His mother, he knew, received reports; he noted, however, that she had given up mentioning them.
The first hint of what his mother and his guardians had in mind for him came from his aunt Elisabeth. In his visits to her she spoke too much about the family’s erstwhile greatness and then took him through all the slights that had been offered to her in the recent past by shopkeepers, milliners, drapers and the wives of men who had been socially beneath her all of her life.
“And now this,” she said, nodding her head sadly. “Now this.”
“What?” he asked.
“They are trying to find you a job as a clerk. A clerk! One of my brother’s sons!”
“I don’t think that is true.”
“Well, you are useless at school. They have given up on you. People love stopping me and telling me that. There is no point in your staying in the classroom much longer. So a clerk it will be. Do you have any better ideas?”
“No one has mentioned it to me.”
“I suppose they are waiting until it is all arranged.”
When Thomas sent Heinrich poems, his brother replied to express his admiration for some of them. Thomas wished he had commented more specifically on lines or images. But it was a passage at the end of the letter that made him sit up: “I hear you will soon be quitting Lübeck, exchanging the school desk for an office desk. As long as there is earth, water and air, there will be fire. And that can only be good news for you.”
He wrote back, asking Heinrich what he meant, but he did not answer.
One day, he found one of his guardians, Consul Fehling, waiting for him sternly in a small sitting room at Dr. Timpe’s when he returned from school. Since the consul did not greet him or shake his hand, Thomas wondered in horror if he had somehow found out about the nocturnal activities on the top floor.
“Your mother has been in touch and it is all arranged. I think your father would be pleased. Some of your teachers, I hear, will not miss you.”
“What is arranged?”
“In a few weeks, you will start work at Spinell’s Fire Insurance in Munich. It is a position that many young men would envy.”
“Why has no one told me?”
“I am telling you now. And there is no need for you to return to the classroom. Instead, you can make sure that Dr. Timpe has nothing to complain about as you vacate your room. You should also visit your aunt before you leave for Munich.”
The consul arranged his journey to Munich. Since he had heard nothing from his mother about a job as a clerk in fire insurance, he was sure that he could convince her that such a job would not suit him. Among the letters he had received from the family, there had been one from Lula that had interested him. In the middle of what was mostly anodyne material, she had declared casually that Heinrich was receiving a decent monthly allowance from their mother.
Thomas knew that the sale of the company after his father’s death had brought in a great deal of money, but he thought that the capital was tied up in investments and that his mother could merely use the interest. He had never realized that any of the money would be due to Heinrich or to him or to his sisters.
But Heinrich was now living between Munich and various Italian locations. His first book had appeared, whose publication, Lula told him, was funded by their mother; he was publishing stories in magazines. Since his mother had agreed to support him, according to Lula, H
einrich was devoting all his time to his literary career and had developed, she wrote, a languid air since spending time in Italy.
Thomas wished that, in his correspondence with his mother, he had written more about his school magazine and the poems he had published. He should have emphasized to her how dedicated he was to his literary career and how seriously his work was taken by his friends. Then he would have paved the way for asking her for a monthly stipend so that he could live like Heinrich.
He put everything he had written and the few pieces he had published in a neat pile. As soon as he got to Munich, he would hand them to his mother. While Heinrich wrote only stories, he would show her that he was a true poet, in the tradition of Goethe and Heine. He hoped that she would be impressed.
* * *
When he arrived in Munich, he expected that his mother, once the others had gone to bed, would explain to him what the job in fire insurance was and why he had been removed from school. On the first night, however, she spoke of everything except the reason for his arrival.
He was taken aback by her appearance. She still wore black, but her clothes were in a mode that belonged to a much younger woman. Her hairstyle, with its fringe at the front and an intricate system of combs and clips, was youthful too. She painted her face and wore a lipstick that she proudly told him had been imported from Paris. When he went into her bedroom, he saw that one whole tabletop was packed with cosmetics. She and Lula, who had grown into a beautiful young woman, discussed fashion as equals and, to Thomas’s amazement, talked about eligible men who might call in the evening as potential suitors for one or the other of them.
On the second night, when Thomas hoped to have a serious discussion with her, she and Lula spoke about some party they had not attended where some new fashion in dress length was on display.
“I don’t think it will catch on,” his mother said.
